This might assuage your Doomsday 2012 fears before December 21 comes and goes without a hitch. One British academic says that the ancient Mayan Apocalypse prophecies are only about as ancient as the 1970s, and that they had some psychedelic help entering the zeitgeist.

“December 21st will be just another Friday morning,” said Andrew Wilson, Assistant Head of Social Studies at the University of Derby. He says that the Mayan Apocalypse prophecy didn’t come from ancient civilization, and that the idea is hardly older than 30-40 years, give or take. Two New Age books in the 70s and 80s are to blame for our apocalyptic fears. The books detail an “upgrade” to human consciousness, predicted by a spirit from the seventh century, and that the whole thing came about from a magic mushroom trip, reports Yahoo.

“A hippy guru called Jose Arguelles associated the date with the Mayan calendar in a book called The Mayan Factor in 1987. But it’s an obsolete form of the calendar, which had not been used since the year 1100AD.”

“He claimed to be channelling various spirits, including the spirit of a Mayan king from the seventh century. He predicted a ‘shift in human consciousness’ – mass enlightenment.” The December 21 date appeared in a 1975 book by Terence McKenna, a writer who is also infamous for strange descriptions of “machine elves” he saw while he was tripping balls.